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"Slacker DBs" vs. Old-Guard DBs

Posted by kdawson on from the close-enough-for-web-work dept.

snydeq writes "Non-relational upstarts — tools that tack the letters 'db' onto a 'pile of code that breaks with the traditional relational model' — have grabbed attention in large part because they willfully ignore many of the rules that codify the hard lessons learned by the old database masters. Doing away with JOINs and introducing phrases like 'eventual consistency,' these 'slacker DBs' offer greater simplicity and improved means of storing data for Web apps, yet remain toys in the eyes of old guard DB admins. 'This distinction between immediate and eventual consistency is deeply philosophical and depends on how important the data happens to be,' writes InfoWorld's Peter Wayner, who let down his old-guard leanings and tested slacker DBs — Amazon SimpleDB, Apache CouchDB, Google App Engine, and Persevere — to see how they are affecting the evolution of modern IT."

3 of 267 comments (clear)

  1. *mods article -1, Flamebait* by TheSpoom · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Is it just me or did this article go out of its way to insult people who use "traditional" RDBMSs?

    I mean, I'm well versed in SQL and data consistency et al, but I'm still more than willing to consider new technologies. What the hell?

    --
    It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
    - E. Debs
  2. Normalization doesn't exist to save disk space by qoncept · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Now that disk space is so cheap and many of the data models don't benefit as much from normalization, ...

    You don't want to store the same data in multiple places. Your query might run faster, but your data integrity is going to suck.

    And, uh, I have the pleasure of working now with a huge data warehouse that hasn't normalized status codes, so instead of quickly searching for an integer, the queries run slow as hell scanning char fields. It's not good.

    --
    Whale
  3. Laziness Rules by ergo98 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Slacker DBs like CouchDB and SimpleDB, have taken off for the simple reason that most developers have absolutely mediocre database knowledge or skills, and rather than learning it's just as easy to just wave it all off as obsolete.

    It's no surprise that the creator of CouchDB, for instance, hadn't a clue about databases when he began his project. All of that built up knowledge just ignored while someone invented their own, and it's as rational as rolling your own encryption from scratch without the slightest clue about encryption algorithms or theories.